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![cover image](/brain/images/horseback-the_invisible_mountain.jpg)
The solo project of Jenks Miller, he is aided here by drummer John Crouch on three of the tracks, and second guitarist Scott Endres on two. The initial three songs follow a similar formula of repetitive drums, distorted bass, and fuzzed out riffing. While that sounds somewhat mundane, the execution is anything but.
Opener "Invokation" fades in the taut drums and fuzzed out bass that are expected from the previous description, but off in the distance there is some really varied melodic guitar playing that normally would clash with the rhythm section. Vocals appear too, with a definite bend to the black metal/grindcore sound akin to Cookie Monster. Normally, this is a turnoff for me, but in this odd amalgamation, it works rather well. The melodic elements pull ahead towards the end, and the whole track has that minimalist repetitive sound that Loop did so well, but less psych and more metal.
"Tyrant Symmetry" is cut from the same cloth but stripped down a bit more and focused more on the melodic guitar work and the growled vocals. There is a definite dynamic shift to the piece, with the change to melodic playing becoming even more pronounced in the middle section. Otherwise it follows the similar path of repetition and intentional simplicity.
The title track leans more on melodic lead guitar work with an even more '70s rock tinge to it, especially when bolstered by the overdriven bass and repetitive drums. The intentional minimalism carried over from the first two tracks does make it feel like a bit like La Monte Young arranging his own version of "Paranoid," which is a good thing.
The biggest departure comes with the album closer, "Hatecloud Dissolving into Nothing," which drops the drums and the bass to instead make it a 16 minute study of chiming guitar textures. There does remain some dark elements in the cloud, namely the guttural vocals that arise here and there like an angry troll poking his head out, but the focus is squarely on the delicate guitar sound. As the track nears its end, the chiming guitar shifts via processing to be sweeping symphonic layers that push the track into soaring ambience that is completely unexpected given the rest of the disc, but entirely wonderful.
The Invisible Mountain is a prime example of an artist pursuing the drone/minimalist route without focusing too heavily on massive detuned guitar riffs or reverb shrouded electronic passages. Horseback takes the idea of drone to the composition level, rather than just the sonic one, and gives new life to a stagnating genre.
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![cover image](/brain/images/jesu-infinity.jpg)
Although it opens with sparse sequenced keyboards and gentle guitar, less than three minutes in a mechanized double kick drum slams in flanked by deep, detuned riffs. Sounds a lot like Godflesh, no? In a way, yes, but the sustained pure guitar tone and Broadrick’s singing make it clear that this is a Jesu record, even if it is a harder edged one.
This dichotomy stays consistent throughout the album, the deep riffs and plodding drum machine (I think the old Alesis SR-16 reappears here) are contrasted with Broadrick’s soft vocals and delicate guitar playing. Even the slower sludgy moments are still laced with chiming guitar that is more delicate than anything Godflesh ever did, and the building tension through the first quarter of this disc is great.
Some 16 minutes in, however, Broadrick goes into hate scream mode, a sound that he has mostly abandoned since the latter half of "Ruined" from the debut EP. I have never been a fan of that vocal style, one of the reasons I don’t look at Streetcleaner as fondly as many others due. Here it comes across a bit too forced and unnecessary. It might be personal preference here, but it is too over the top. Those who pine for the death metal tinged days of Streetcleaner will be happy I bet.
The second half stays rooted in the lugubrious pace the album began with, slow riffs that feel a bit like a less metallic version of "Merciless" that eventually fade into the more gentle post rock guitar sound of Jesu. Again, it’s reminiscent of the first two releases though a bit more sparse and somewhat like the split with Battle of Mice. The Japanese pressing again adds bonus material, in the form of "Infinity 2," essentially an alternate mix of the last segment of the track that is a bit more dense than what is presented here, though not by much.
For the most part the electronic elements are minimized on this disc, mostly relegated to the drum machine and the occasional synth flourish, far less than on the Envy split or the Why Are We Not Perfect EP. It is definitely more organic and "traditional" sounding than most of the recent Jesu work, stripping the sound down to its barest essentials, and demonstrating that Broadrick does not need to rely on machines or heavy digital processing to make a compelling work.
While the format makes causal listening difficult, "Infinity" is an ever shifting work that never bogs down or becomes stagnant. Even with its longform style, there are discernable segments that are as beautiful or as raw as anything Jesu has done, and pulls away from the ever-increasing pop sensibilities that have been developing. It’s not quite the headbanging fest that old school Godflesh fans have been waiting for, but I’m sure they’ll still find much to like here.
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![cover image](/brain/images/matt_elliott-failing_songs.jpg)
The electronic darkness Elliott embodied with demonically skewed drum and bass in the Third Eye Foundation has since been transferred into the sound of brooding folk music. Taking his cue from Gypsy and Sephardic traditions, from the music of people who have long been oppressed, his sad sounds are all the more sincere. In this sense Failing Songs manages to joyfully participate in the sorrows of the world.
People who feel comfortable accepting the status quo might feel uncomfortable when listening to this album. They would be better off taking Xanax and watching reality TV. The whining of the fiddle and multi-tracked voices of “Our Weight In Oil” starts things off on a somber note. He laments that “we lost our lives to worthless oil / and were worth less than our weight in oil / but the stockholders all had their pay / but it's we who clean their mess anyway.” The theme of corporate tyranny is fleshed out further on “Chains.” Here he sings “we’re free to do exactly what were told / we’re free to buy exactly what we’re sold / we’re nothing more than slaves.” A sea shanty filled up with a saturated overdriven guitar line, it very much calls to mind images of perilous maritime journeys, and human cargo chained up in the hull. He goes on to explore subjects of war, and the soldier pawns killed on the whims of politicians, assassination of politicians as a reasonable response, and the argumentative stalemates that so often happen in relationships. And of course, it all ends with an extended trip to the grave.
Listening to this music took me on an introspective tour down an embittered memory lane. It was like being handed a microscope with slides of faults and shortcomings, both personal and collective. His bruised political ire never lets up. Not one moment of light shines through, except the highly focused beam he points on the human predicament. Yet it is his talents as a song writer and multi-instrumentalist that allows him to take on difficult subjects and make them beautiful. The blows dealt by his unflinching look at human nature are softened by employing melodious mandolins, wheezing accordions, and the delicate tinkles of piano. In the end, all the pieces fit together to make an album that is very mournful and full of grace.
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For listeners raised on oldies radio and camping trips, Desolation Wilderness will sound immediately familiar. Even at its most dramatic, their music has a muted quality that mimics the noise of some distant AM station. Melodies emerge and then vanish, like a phrase from a favorite song caught through layers of static. Nicholaas Zwart, the main vocalist for the band, sings in a high, clear voice that would be perfectly intelligible were it not submerged under gallons of reverb. The effect garbles his words, giving them the tone of a bedraggled, early-morning phone call. They suggest rather than proclaim, sigh instead of shout. Zwart’s lyrics merge with the sounds around them, their precision lost in the ether.
Alone, the production on New Universe is not enough to suggest vast open spaces. The songs already have that quality built into them. They resemble the surface of the ocean pictured on the album cover: an endless progression of swells emanating just over the horizon. The opener, “Venice Beach,” begins with silvery cymbal fills anchored by floating bass notes. It slowly builds, until the main riff emerges from the din, crashing like breakers against a pier. Many of the songs feature interludes, where the band will slow the tempo and let their instruments ring out, notes glimmering like tide-pool reflections. Tambourine, glockenspiel, analogue synths, and wood-blocks all blend into a single chiming, clicking mass, holding the music in supple tension as the band awaits the return of the main melody.
No matter how diffuse the songs on New Universe become, they never degenerate in formless noodling. The band keeps its momentum, pushed forward by drummers Evan Hashi and Andrew Dorsett. Both play in a relaxed style with crisp snare and cymbal work. In “Slow Fade,” drum taps weave between lilting guitar lines, the rhythm at once stiff and gentle. The beat fades for a moment but re-emerges with even more confidence, ending the song in a shimmering coda.
Desolation Wilderness conjures beauty with deceptive ease. Since their music is both laid-back and melancholy, it is easy to reflexively think of them as underachievers. Generating spacey sound-effects may be easy, but making the result engaging is not. So many attempts at evoking atmosphere fail because of shear weightlessness. New Universe flirts with being superfluous but still holds-up under serious listening. Desolation Wilderness should be proud; most bands don’t make it out of such nebulous territory intact.
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![cover image](/brain/images/maozsirkis-elementarydialogues.jpg)
Maoz and Sirkis drench their jazz duets in blankets of swing, metal, dance, and folk—odd combinations that produce 11 pieces of tripped out bliss. Rather than focus on delivering concrete compositions stuck in stuffy penguin suits, Maoz treats his guitar like ancient rock gods. The strings beg for mercy with every bend, stretch, slide, and pluck. Likewise, Sirkis is well versed in assault, pounding the skins, playing foil to Maoz at each turn.
Elementary Dialogue begins with the eager island twang of “Reggae.” Maoz barely drips his wick in the Jamaican export, leaving Sirkis’ backbeats to produce the stoned grooves of chill dub. Maoz foregoes the obvious, producing slap-dashed guitar lines reminiscent of Shack-Man era Medeski, Martin, and Wood. “Duo” investigates modern guitar in a sparse setting; Maoz delivering carefully plotted notes and aggressive strums with a Loren Connors cool and a Sir Richard Bishop Mediterranean melody. All of Maoz’s influences coalesce inside “Hole,” a full-on seizure of Neil skronk, Hendrix psych, and Tom Verlaine attitude, and if not for Sirkis’ erratic drum solo, the track would be Elementary Dialogues’ shining moment.
The beauty of Maoz and Sirkis’ partnership is in balance. Never does a Maoz jam try to outshine Sirkis’ many fits nor does Sirkis ever trample over Maoz’s quiet moments with his furious tom fills and cymbal attacks. Look no further than Elementary Dialogues’ strongest tracks: “Strip” and “Miniature.” As the titles suggest, each is a nugget of experimental self-control. Maoz and Sirkis are eager to cover A through Z with every ounce of music produced, but it’s what is missing on “Strip” and “Miniature” that find them as stand-outs; gone are the meandering skronks and overdone lounge fills. The space between the guitar and drums is allowed equal billing, allowing for the classic smoky atmosphere of ghetto dive bars and forgotten clubs to permeate through the music. The appeal of jazz has always been its cool veneer; something Maoz and Sirkis capture in their best moments.
Elementary Dialogues won’t wow followers of jazz giants known the world over for their skill, but Eyal Maoz and Asaf Sirkis will convert the jazz meager—those who have always feared what the cooler side of music has to offer. What Maoz and Sirkis create isn’t fusion but it melds together the worlds of rock and jazz with veteran know-how.
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![cover image](/brain/images/analog_concept-listen_already_today_music_past.jpg)
If an hour-long track of analog beats and drifting electronics sounds a bit heavy-handed, fear not. This is as light and warm as it gets, with Alexey's instrumentation guiding the way between miniatures, each of which explores a new incantation of the musician's sound. Some of them are pure rave drift, with little ticking beats tickling the underbellies of vast stretches of electronic tone; others take a more spaced out stance, pointing their eye out toward the nebulae and watching it drift apart while marbles crash underfoot. Each one drifts in and out as effortlessly as the next, some lasting longer but none exceeding their desired timetable.
As with so many of the smaller run labels today, Stunned's limited pressings have allowed the album maximum conceptual freedom. These could easily be broken into tracks (of which their would be many) and sequenced as sketches, but the coagulation of the ideas into a single long take means gives the whole a much more weighty feeling removed from the brevity of the numbers individually. Rapid fire drum machine numbers with laser beam stutters rest alongside brooding drone nod-offs, but the necessity of experiencing one before the other provides real shape to the output.
With so many ideas packed into it though, it's a wonder the album maintains the cohesion it does. This never sounds divided, no matter how many areas are drawn from, and even the stoned out white hum of one part, whose only accompaniment is aimless squiggling above, feels as if it is arriving from the same voice as the strictly beat oriented tracks. Much of the material sounds more like early synthesizer experiments, with single staccato runs going ad infinitum, but these give a retro sterility that efectively clears the air for lush drone pieces that sound as if they could go be drawn out for, well, the entire album.
To some extent, the disc's most valuable asset is its ability to sound entirely removed from any context; it appears as a truly outsider work despite the clear reference points of its practitioner, which include everyone from Gordon Mumma to Asmus Tietchens to Aphex Twin. Still, it seems Alexey's most important influences lie far below the public radar, lying under the Russian streets in continual drift.
This is what keeps the music as exciting as it does. It is wisely constructed but also one step removed from that which it initially appears as: an infinitely rich take on synthesizer music that reveals more with every listen. Each detail is as unexpected and inconspicuous as the next, giving it a life far beyond many more consciously connected to these areas of musical output.
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![cover image](/brain/images/ananthologyofchineseexperimentalmusic.jpg)
An Anthology of Chinese Experimental Music to me is a modern equivalent of Brian Eno’s No New York, an insider’s view of hermetic geographical scene. While it covers a much longer time period than Eno’s compilation, it is still a snapshot of a living, breathing China that is lost in the western media’s portrayal of the massive country. Having quickly exhausted the few artists I recognized, the rest of the box set is a good education. With over 40 artists featured, this kind of peek into the Chinese underground would be otherwise impossible. What is noticeable the whole way through is how high the quality of the performances is on the four discs.
Out of the more well known artists included, the pieces included are largely representative of their work. Two of the contributions that feature Dickson Dee are the kind of lush, ambient sounds that would normally be found on a release on Touch Records. His long career peppered with international collaborations make for a cosmopolitan approach to electronic music. As per usual, Torturing Nurse push all the levels into the red; their punishing noise reminiscent of Japanoise artists. That both Dee and Torturing Nurse sound so like experimental music from outside of China may be due to their geography, Hong Kong and Shanghai (their respective bases) both having stronger ties with the outer world than other areas of China.
On the flip side of this coin, there are other well known Chinese artists who have taken note of international styles but have subverted them to their own needs. Li Jianhong seems to have forged a pure guitar technique that is as shocking the first time as my first encounters with Derek Bailey and Keiji Haino. Both his solo performances and his work with Huangjin as D!O!D!O!D! are a riot of guitar, noise and adrenaline. On a similar note, Shenggy, vocalist and rhythm maker with White, combines what she learned during her stint as a musician in Beijing with her later move to Europe to develop a distinctive style of her own. Unlike the staid elegance of her work in White, “Junggy’s Decay” sees Shenggy go for the jugular, furious and feral. Both Jianhong and Shenggy merge different musical lineages into something new and beautiful. It is not just a case of east meets west or some other trite notion, it is the same sort of reinvention seen during '70s Germany; a co-opting of outside sources in order to reinvent the wheel.
They are not alone in this reinvention. The other artists on this anthology cannot be lesser known because of the quality of their work as most of them show a flair for invention and inspiration. Alice Hui-Sheng Chang’s vocal experiments are out there on their own, playing not only with her own voice but the space in which she finds herself both physically and mentally. Elsewhere, “Dream a Little Dream” by Beijing’s Nara is a slowly evolving piece of gentle techno-infused electronic music, the daintiness of the rhythm and melodies giving the music a natural grace. This grace is present throughout the set, surprising me because of my previous exposure to the more extreme side of Chinese experimental music. Even when the music is violent, there is a balance underlying it that is a world away from the reckless abandon of other harsh noise artists. Ying Fan’s “L2255 mix” comes close to chaos but Fan shows a restraint which tempers the extreme sounds.
Although the anthology only looks at music made in the last 17 years, there is a mix of old and new guards in the selection of artists. As well as all the young upstarts, Wu Quan and Nelson Hiu (Dancing Stone) both represent the approaches of the older generation of experimental artists. Quan’s “Weather Forest” and Hiu’s “Two” represent two other sides of this expansive experimental movement in Chinese music, the former a journey through a land made of vibrant electronic sound whereas the latter incorporates singing and dizzying flute playing to startling effect. That these two older (but not old) artists contribute such thrilling pieces shows that this sort of experimentation in music is not a new trend but one that has been germinating for years.
Sub Rosa have surpassed themselves in bringing this music out into the light and the inclusion of short biographies and discographies in the sleeve notes are very much appreciated. The inclusion of an essay by Yan Jun and Zbigniew Karkowski provides both an insider’s and an informed outsider’s view of this scene, giving further life to the project. Finally, Dickson Dee has done a sterling job in weaving together all the disparate strands of all these artists into one taut rope; a compilation based on geography rather than genre has never sounded so coherent.
samples:
- Nara, "Dream a Little Dream"
- Jedung Kying, "Dabao"
- Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, "There She Is, Standing and Walking on her Own"
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![cover image](/brain/images/mika_vainio-aineen.jpg)
The cut-and-paste randomness is most evident in the opening piece, "Roma A. D. 2727." While the title sounds like it could be a very bad sci fi movie from the 1970s, the sound is a variety of sweeping digital lines of static, shrill sine waves that morph into sputtering white noise, and the occasionally regal orchestral sweep of synthetic sound. Sometimes roaring and harsh, and other times it drops to near pure silence, it shambles without any particular flow, for better or worse. It doesn’t have a sense of tight composition, but instead feels like random pastiches slapped together.
"Silencés Traverses Des Mondes Et Des Anges" has a more consistent structure to it, beginning with bird squawks, noise, and rain, like a post-apocalyptic soundscape. These sounds subtly segue into gentle stuttering waves of white noise. Occasionally these blast into more forceful territory, and occasionally matched with what sounds like an actual or synthetic didgeridoo, before dropping out to silence and then miniscule found sounds.
Dedicated to John Duncan, "Hautaa Hevosen Pää" ("Bury a Horse’s Head") is a more rhythmic composition, beginning with icy ambience and static laced scrapes, there are buried melodies and reverberated textures that are more overt throughout. The psychedelic low frequency pulses and phased static buzzes give it a much different sound quality than those that preceded it. "In A Frosted Lake" is a very descriptive title: being the most reserved of the tracks, its subtlety causes it to slip into the background when listening, but its glacial sound are never fully ignorable.
"Ylimääräisen Antenni Lämpötilan Mittaus 4080 MHz: SSÄ" ("A Measurement of Excess Antenna Temperature at 4080 Ml/S"), besides sounding like an electronic engineer's doctoral dissertation, features ultrasonic hums and buzzes with chiming distant loops far off in the distance. At the very end small bursts of what could be popular music appear, though so heavily filtered and effected to render them unidentifiable.
"Swedenborgia" and "Hengityttajä" ("The Breather") are the most aggressive of the pieces. The former opens with field recording sounds but adds in power drill like bass tones and warm, fuzzy static.The volume drifts into harsh territories at times, and the end features what may be an actual real live cymbal, or a digitally modeled equivalent. The latter demonstrates a lot of quiet metallic rattling and pinging before massive static squalls and reverb buried crashes max out the intensity of the sound.
While demonstrating Vainio’s love for clinically sparse digital textures, I think it is somewhat of a weaker album than his work with Pan Sonic, where the staunch minimalism is wrapped around sparse beats rather than here, where it is presented anomalously. It is a good album for sure, but it doesn’t have the same unique or individualist sound that it could have otherwise.
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![cover image](/brain/images/altz_meets_roland_p_young-escape_reconstruction_isophonic_boogie_woogie.jpg)
Likely the most notable change in the way the album is restructured isn't so much in the source material, which serves as the carrot and leads Altz on the entire journey throughout, but in the incessant beats that run through the album, turning it into a grooving trance-like album with horn lines and jazz percussion steering the melodic content. "Crystaliquid Sky" begins with the tinkling of thumb piano, looping itself over clattering bells before absorbing into its fold a driving beat that will drive the remainder of the track, slipping in and out and carrying the work out of the studio and into the streets, reconfiguring an oddly metered bass clarinet line into an abstracted New Orleans swing line before diving into free sax skronk and canvases of rhythm.
Usually this sort of thing has limited appeal, laying the one trick—in this case, a beat—over the existing stuff but Altz has a way of keeping it interesting throughout, never just layering his material on top but turning Young's work inside-out and finding beats within the items already present. "Magenta Loops" takes an alarmingly Kenny G-esque sax solo and lays a bass heavy jungle groove beneath, giving it a light and spaced out euphoria. "Velvet Dreamin'" opens with treatings of the bass clarinet and rolling drums, staying as abstracted as the original without losing the feel of Altz's previous work on the album, taking on a loungey distortion for most of its length.
The least dance floor-worthy track is in the brief "Fly Times," but rather than disrupt the flow of the disc it actually serves as a welcome respite, finding languid horn lines and fluttering sax writhing beneath a thick electronic haze, a kind of cleansing of the palette before "Stillness (D'n'B Version)," a work done in conjunction with DJ Kensei lays on sci-fi feel on thick, representing the most electronically based piece here and one fairly well removed from the roots of the original. Still, the material makes its way in, but not in the same careful balance displayed on the rest of the disc.
The closing "Funks" also draws on a futuristically tilted beat, but it is better able to engrain Young's work in, giving it a richness. The moments where Altz takes over with his own material are somewhat weak, displaying a lack of direction, but the balance is better weighted than on the previous track. The track actually serves as a fine microcosm of the album as a whole, at its best representing the potential of blending such disparate stylistic elements and at its worst revealing the potential pitfalls of one artist working with another's material. When proper admiration of the material is given, it turns into a convening of minds; when it isn't it turns into a hacking up of something for seemingly egoistic means. Altz typically does a fine job of showing his love for Young's original, and it is those frequent moments that make the album an exciting alternative take.
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![cover image](/brain/images/anatomiahumanlust.jpg)
Dissected Humanity was a serviceable if forgettable album; to my ears Anatomia made the kind of death metal that has been done to, well, death since it was perfected in the early '90s. Their worship of classic death metal is more than obvious from the moment I opened the package containing Human Lust. This tape looks exactly like a holy relic from the golden age of death metal with its Xeroxed cover, gory Lovecraftian artwork and a polite thank you note from the band to the purchaser.
Over the course of the three songs on the cassette, Anatomia shroud their old school violence in more darkness. Elements of Eyehategod and Obituary echo down the chasm that Anatomia have created. As with Dissected Humanity, this is not paradigm shifting reinvention but Human Lust is an awesome and thrilling release.
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Past & Present
This album did not make much of an impact on me the first few times that I heard it, aside from the instantly gratifying highlights of Anna Black’s Nina Simone-esque cover of timeless suicide anthem “Gloomy Sunday” and Mary McCaslin’s bleak interpretation of The Supremes' “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” As I listened to it more and more, however, I began to notice the lyrics and it began dawning on me just how warped and unique many of these songs are: most of these ladies had some seriously heavy shit that they wanted to convey (albeit often in a drug-, J.R.R. Tolkien-, or God-damaged way). Admittedly, ambition far overreaches talent in some cases, but it certainly makes for a singularly compelling listen. The earnestness required to compose a song about a “candle that burns through the darkness and ignorance of man” or an imaginary dialogue with Satan is a rare commodity these days.
Women Blue is packed full of ear-catching moments, but one of the more noteworthy ones is Michele’s bizarrely hostile torch song “Blind as You Are,” which features spacey electronic flourishes beneath its coldly brutal musings (“You can die, blind as you are. No one will care.”) and urges listeners to “break down the Babylonian wall.” Of course, there are also a number of songs that are just plain good in a relatively straightforward way, particularly Kathy McCord’s powerful “I Will Never Be Alone Again” and Rosalie Sorrels’ dark and twangy “In The Quiet Country of Your Eyes.” Also, I don’t usually get very exited about liner notes, but I found many of the artist’s stories intriguing (Michele was rumored to be an actual broomstick-riding witch, for example) and useful in providing context. I sure wish there was a lyric sheet though.
The two artists that definitively cement Women Blue’s essentiality for me are Amanda Trees and Dayle Stanley. Both veer quite decisively into the realm of outsider art and, unsurprisingly, both women are shrouded in mystery. Stanley was active in the Boston folk scene in the early '60s, but disappeared after releasing two well-regarded albums. Her “Cry The Mountains White” is notable for several reasons: for one, she belts it out like she is auditioning for a high school talent show; secondly, she often yodels in a bizarre, underwater-sounding way; and finally, her lyrics are deeply odd and seem to combine Lord of the Rings-esque mythology with details of her own life (“If I could go, I’d follow you to the hateful mountains white, Steven.”). Trees (about whom virtually nothing is known) is a bit more understated, fragile, and conventionally melodic in her delivery, but her lyrics are exponentially weirder still: “Queen Wilhelmina” tackles snow, scarves, horse-drawn spaceships, ghosts, gardens, Wall Street, and disillusionment with her friends all within a roughly four minute span. It isn’t quite stream-of-consciousness, either; it actually seems like Trees believes there to be a perfectly plausible narrative arc linking everything together. Both women seem far too effortlessly surreal and uncommercial to have ever made it into a recording studio or convinced anyone to release their albums, but I am certainly happy that they did.
Woman Blue is a truly impressive curatorial achievement, as Past & Present has plucked a uniformly compelling batch of songs from the deepest depths of obscurity and rarity (I tried to track down an Amanda Trees album and could only find one available in the entire world...in Greece.). More importantly, however, these eclectic songstresses each had their own unique vision and sang with a great deal of conviction. This is serious art, not failed pop music. No one featured on this album got here simply because they wrote a pleasant melody or had a nice voice, these women were swinging for the fences (so to speak). Anyone interested in folk music will find a lot to like here, but the truly revelatory moments are reserved for those in search of inspired eccentricity and general soul-baring weirdness.
samples:
- Kathy McCord – I Will Never Be Alone Again
- Anna Black – Gloomy Sunday
- Amanda Trees – Queen Wilhelmina
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